The most watched event in the car circle recently is the 2024 Beijing International Auto Show held from April 25 to May 4.
The Beijing Auto Show, which has been absent for four years, is particularly important in the context of the rapid development of China's new energy vehicles. According to the data of the Passenger Association, on April 1 ~ 14, the retail proportion of China's new energy passenger vehicles has officially exceeded 50%, and the market share of independent brands has exceeded 50% as early as last year. At this year's Beijing Auto Show, it is expected that there will be 117 world premieres, 41 concept cars, and 278 new energy models.
Also noteworthy are the developments in the charging infrastructure sector. At the "2024 Huawei Smart Electric & Smart Charging Network Strategy and New Product Launch Conference" held on April 24, the release of the Supercharging Alliance and Huawei's new products on the smart charging network showed the upgrade of the smart charging network.
Hou Jinlong, Director of the Board of Directors of Huawei and President of Huawei Digital Power, announced the "One Body, Three Sides" electrification strategy at the conference: "Let new energy vehicles use new energy electricity", "Let there be high-quality charging where there are roads", and "Let new energy vehicles have excellent power experience", accelerating the process of vehicle electrification through high-quality coordinated development of intelligent electric vehicles and intelligent charging networks.
(Hou Jinlong, Director of Huawei and President of Huawei Digital Power)
Breaking down silos: the ultimate form of the charging network emerges
Compared with the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the development of the charging network in mainland China is also very fast. According to the "China Charging Infrastructure Service Quality Development Report", by the end of 2023, there will be 8.596 million charging piles of various types in China, including 2.726 million public charging piles, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio will reach 2.4:1 in 2023.
However, it should also be noted that although there are many public charging piles, there are also problems such as low quality and insufficient interconnection. Taking the latter as an example, there are many types of charging operators in mainland China and they are scattered, including third-party charging operators, car companies, and energy or site element enterprises, and the stock of charging piles has formed an "island".
From the perspective of electric vehicle owners, this kind of island will affect the charging experience: first of all, it is difficult to find a pile, which needs to be found on different APPs, which is very cumbersome; secondly, the usability is poor, and if you find a pile, your car may not be suitable and cannot be used; and then there is the annoyance of charging, either you need to download a special APP, or you need to register in the applet, and it is difficult to say fast when paying and settling. Some experts attribute the interconnection of charging piles to the physical level, software level, and settlement level, all of which have problems.
From this perspective, we can see the significance of the supercharging alliance led by Huawei. Huawei Digital Power, together with the first batch of 11 car companies (ranked alphabetically), including AVATAR, BAIC, BYD, Great Wall, GAC, Hezhong, JAC, Li Auto, Chery, Celis, and Xpeng, and more than 500 online and offline charging operators and industry associations, witnessed the establishment of the "Supercharging Alliance". In the future, it will attract more and more ecological partners to join and jointly build the supercharging alliance ecosystem.
Hou Jinlong explained the purpose of the establishment of the Supercharging Alliance: to create a supercharging network with the ultimate experience and wide coverage for users through the method of "co-building an ecosystem", so that users can "buy new energy vehicles with confidence"; car companies do not need to build their own charging networks, but focus on improving the competitiveness of electric vehicles, so that car companies can "focus on building good cars"; operators can operate efficiently, increase revenue, and let operators "build good stations with confidence"; It is safer to build a high-quality charging network, improve the utilization rate of urban resources and management safety, and make new energy vehicles and charging facilities an integral part of the new power system through technological innovation, so that the power grid can "supply and distribute electricity with confidence".
This supercharging alliance is essentially to use technology to build a supercharging ecological network. Specifically, Huawei Digital Power breaks down the barriers between operation platforms, regions, and vehicle systems through protocol docking, cloud-cloud interconnection, and development collaboration with vehicle manufacturers, charging operators, and industry partners, thereby breaking down silos and achieving interconnection, leaving complexity to itself and simplicity to users, and benefiting car companies, operators, power grids, and even entire cities.
This full-process, all-digital, and all-intelligent ultra-fast charging experience, as well as the model of breaking silos and maximizing the utilization of charging infrastructure, can be called a win-win move for car companies, charging operators and industry chain partners, and represents the ultimate form of charging network interconnection.
Charging infrastructure upgrades, bursting out of new quality productivity
In addition to the Supercharging Alliance, the 2024 fully liquid-cooled series products released by Huawei Digital Power have also attracted much attention from the industry.
On the one hand, it is a series of products covering more power segments, including 480 series and 360 series, which complement the 480KW and 360KW power segments, and on the other hand, it is suitable for more diversified charging scenarios, in addition to urban and intercity scenarios, more scenarios such as parks, buses, mines, logistics, hotels, and rural areas have been added.
Such an upgrade could not have come at the right time. As stated in the "China Charging Infrastructure Service Quality Development Report", in the face of the strong growth expectation of the new energy vehicle market in the future, the mainland's charging infrastructure has obvious deficiencies and room for improvement in layout planning, station configuration, service quality and operation management, etc., and it is urgent to develop towards high quality.
This is also fully reflected in the "Guiding Opinions on Further Building a High-quality Charging Infrastructure System" issued by the General Office of the State Council in June last year, which proposes that by 2030, a high-quality charging infrastructure system with wide coverage, moderate scale, reasonable structure and perfect functions will be basically built, which will strongly support the development of the new energy vehicle industry.
Huawei Digital Power's 2024 product upgrade is essentially to use high-quality products to help the high-quality development of China's charging infrastructure.
The reason for this is that Huawei has many black technologies in the field of supercharging, which can "stand in the future and see the present", bringing a subversive charging experience to users and charging network operators. For users, the ultimate experience of nearly "one kilometer per second" and "200 kilometers of battery life in 5 minutes of charging" is comparable to the refueling experience of fuel vehicles, which is in line with users' beautiful imagination of new energy vehicles.
More importantly, Huawei's supercharging is a "pain point to see the experience", directly hitting the pain points of users and operators, and bringing a differentiated experience. For users, the biggest pain points in the charging process are charging speed, charging success rate, and safety, such as Huawei's ultra-fast charging of "one kilometer per second", plug and charge with a one-time charging success rate of about 99%, and the safety protection of people, vehicles, and piles. It is a full range of safety: there are double insulation designed for high voltage of overcharging to ensure personal safety, there are intelligent algorithms that accurately control the charging current to ensure the safety of the vehicle, and there are 24 key protection mechanisms and 39 safety control strategies to ensure the safety of the equipment.
For operators, the biggest pain point in operating charging infrastructure is the reliability and profitability of equipment. In this regard, Huawei's fully liquid-cooled design of Supercharge provides an ultra-long service life of up to 15 years, and the highly reliable design and high-quality verification in all scenarios can achieve near-zero maintenance. In terms of revenue, bipolar power pooling + high-order dynamic routing improves power utilization by about 30%, and the support of black technologies such as self-developed topology, liquid cooling and heat dissipation, and intelligent optimization can also reduce O&M expenses and increase operators' revenues.
At present, the state is vigorously promoting the development of new quality productive forces. What is a new quality productive force? In essence, it is an advanced productive force with the three characteristics of high technology, high efficiency, and high quality. From this point of view, Huawei's supercharging is a typical new quality productivity.
First of all, Huawei's supercharging products can be said to be a combination of many high-tech products: full liquid cooling, bipolar power pooling, dynamic power routing, DC stacking, modular design, patented topology, intelligent algorithms, and cloud-cloud docking...... Taking the "power pooling + intelligent power scheduling" technology as an example, the charging power can be maximized and shared and dynamically allocated to each vehicle when the charging station is busy, which can maximize the overall charging efficiency, and when the station is idle, the charging power of the single vehicle can be maximized, bringing the ultimate charging experience.
Second, Huawei's supercharging infrastructure can achieve higher power utilization and higher system energy efficiency. It is understood that its system efficiency can reach up to 95.5%, which is in a leading position in the industry, and the integration of optical storage and charging can also realize the low-carbon, green and grid-friendly charging infrastructure.
In terms of high quality, Huawei's fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast integrated system has a service life of up to 15 years, a low failure rate, and can be "maintenance-free".
It can be seen that the upgrade of the intelligent charging network integrating high technology, high efficiency and high quality is the burst path of new quality productivity.
Postscript: The real picture of the new era of supercharging
As we all know, new energy vehicles have an important position at the national strategic level. Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the electrification of new energy vehicles is green, intelligent is digital, it embodies the full connotation of the fourth industrial revolution, and the development of new energy vehicles is not only driven by the automobile industry, it has driven all related industries, energy, chemical industry, transportation, equipment, construction, information industry all-round drive, it is really a "locomotive".
Compared with 2017, the sales of domestic new energy vehicles in 2023 will increase from 780,000 to 9.5 million (an increase of more than 8.7 million), and in April this year, the penetration rate of China's new energy passenger vehicles has successfully crossed the important watershed of "50%", which is due to the development of charging infrastructure.
However, in the context of new energy vehicles going from 0 to 1 and moving towards from 1 to N, obvious changes are taking place. As Hou Jinlong said, there have been "three changes": users have shifted from operating car users to private car users, the electrification path has shifted from large battery life to ultra-fast charging, and the number of new energy vehicles has developed from one million to ten million. In this context, it is no longer appropriate for charging infrastructure to simply pursue "vehicle-to-pile ratio", and it needs to change to the pursuit of "high quality". Huawei's actions on the smart charging network provide a high-quality development path and show a real picture of the new era of supercharging.
On the one hand, with the blessing of black technology, the charging infrastructure will be transformed towards high quality, high efficiency and intelligence, and comprehensive supercharging, and on the other hand, it will promote the supercharging alliance, break the silos of charging infrastructure, and promote the continuous coverage of all scenarios of the ultra-fast charging network.
As a result, a new energy vehicle owner can be charged, charged quickly, and charged well, and a new era of supercharging that "where there is a road, there is high-quality charging", and a new era of supercharging that is loved by car owners, friendly to the power grid, and efficient in operation can come.